Tonight, the Discovery Channel aired the premier of "Curiosity" starring Stephen Hawking. Considering the title of the episode (Did God Create The Universe?) and Hawking's stance on that question, I expected to be pleased, impressed, entertained, etc. Disappointment ensued. The only thing that made watching the episode entertaining was my participation in The Evolving Scientist's "Live Blog".
Not only was "Curiosity" extremely boring (it seemed to be dumbed down so much, that it might as well have been geared towards preteens), but it essentially skirted the question (although Hawking did answer the question with No). The panel discussion, afterwards, was worse. The theologian on the panel brought up the notion of NOMA (for those of you who don't know this term, it stands for Non-Overlapping Magisteria, which basically says that god is out of the realm of science; put another way, science is for the how, not the why) and he invited Hawking to have conversations with theologians (somehow, I think Hawking has better things to do with his time, such as, unifying physics).
I hypothesized, during the Live Blog, that the Templeton Foundation might have some secret involvement in the creation of this episode, but it was probably presented, in the way that it was, out of fear. Fear of pissing off the majority of Americans who are highly religious and sorely under-educated. It really is a shame.
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